Adventures with Bart part 1

One of the wheels fell off of Bart's luggage on his way to Zürich. Bart had looked up where the Samsonite repair shop in Zürich was and wanted me to come with. I've had a broken zipper on my bag for a long time and the big zipper finally broke on this trip so I figured it was probably time I got mine fixed as well.

So we hopped on the tram with our empty suitcases and started heading for the other side of town. Not that this will mean much to most of you, but we were staying at one end of the 11 tram line and this place was at the other end of the 13 tram line so it was probably a 45 min ride. About half way there some people with scanners get on the train. I figured they were the people who spot check that you have tickets so I started digging my ticket out. At the same Bart gets up and gets off of the train. It is now obvious that Bart has forgotten to get a new ticket so I debate for a second whether to just meet him at our destination or to get off as well. I decide it would probably be best to not lose the guy that knows where we are going so I get off the train as well.

We get Bart a new ticket from the machine and wait for the next train. This being Zürich it was only about a 7 minute wait (have I mentioned I love the public transport here). We finally get out to our stop and get off of the train. We look around and don't see anything that is obviously a luggage shop. We walk a block or so in each direction looking for it and I ask Bart where the guy said it was . He said it was 50 meters back from the tram stop, but we didn't see anything. So I ask what the address is, he didn't write it down. Ok, what is it called? Didn't write that down either. He figured he'd be able to recognize it from the sight from the tram stop.

Word of advice to companies, don't put your store/repair shop locater in a flash app. It makes it impossible to use them from a cell phone/blackberry. So Bart went hunting for some WiFi so he could look up the address and I was left on the street guarding the bags. I think we both got our share of weird looks in the process, but he eventually found an open network and was able to get the address.

Turns out we just hadn't gone quite far enough and that the repair shop was in what looked like an apartment building about two blocks down from where I had been standing.

So we ring the bell and get let into this guys workshop. It is in a basement apartment and is packed floor to ceiling with suitcases. He asks if we speak any German and I say I speak a little. I'm able to translate most of what he is saying, but pretty useless at coming up with any sentences of my own. Basically he didn't have the parts for Bart's bag, but he could put the wheel that fell off back on and it should be good enough to get him home. My bag wasn't a problem because he had the parts he needed. He told us he could have them ready about 3pm (it was about 12:15pm). This sounded good except Bart needed his bag today since he was leaving for his vacation in the morning and since it took us so long to get there we'd pretty much just have to hang out there until it was done.

So Bart asks if he could do it right now if he paid extra. The guy thinks about it and goes to talk to his wife. I think he had to make sure he could be late for lunch. He came back agreed to fix this bags right away. It was impressive watching him work. He didn't just screw the wheel back on and send us on our way. He disassembled the whole corner of the suitcase and fixed the wobbly legs. He pounded the metal part of the suitcase wheel flat again before he reattached the plastic part of the wheel. He cut off any stray threads and finally got the heat gun out to shrink up any of the fraying. The whole time carefully putting away any tool he was done working with.

My suitcase was an easier fix, he just had to replace a few of the zipper pulls. I was always curious how you did that. You take a tool and stretch the pull a bit and then slip it onto the zipper and clamp it down with some pliers. He also did something with some kind of paste and a lighter, but I'm not sure what exactly he was doing. He gave my bag the same treating for the frays and checked that the wheels were ok. He even noticed one of the zippers was on backwards and asked if I wanted it fixed. I said it was fine. Both bags together came to about 100CHF ($85) and Bart paid him with a nice tip.

So we headed back to the office with our newly fixed bags and everyone lived happily ever after.

Next time: Bart goes sledding and I get to go to Bern